Creating the Scene - Buildings

Creating the Buildings

To keep the Poly count low in the scenes as there will be lots of different objects - I wanted to look into how I could create objects with high quality but low poly count. 

I experimented different ways into how to create a building that looked realistic yet remained easy to manipulate and wasn't heavy on the scene. 

To start I looked through a lot of building textures and experimented which one looked most realistic as a building but also to the time of Pearl Harbour. I then mapped the building texture to a plane in 3DS max making sure the plane was the same dimensions as the texture (show in picture 1.1)

Picture 1.1

I followed these steps to apply the texture to the plane:

Press 'M' to bring up map editor > Under 'Modes' in top left hand corner changed view to 'Compact material editor' > click top left grey ball > under 'blinn basic parameters' click the grey box next to 'diffuse' > Select bitmap > navigate to the texture desired > click 'show material in viewport' which will show the texture without having to render. 

The texture will now be applied to the plane. 

Something very noticeable about buildings is that they don't have flat surfaces. To make the flat plane more dimensional I followed these steps:

Right click plane > convert to editable poly > click 'edges' under 'selection' > under 'edit geometry' click 'quick slice' > then draw the red line across any section that would either come out of the building or go into (shown in picture 1.2) > Under 'selection' click 'polygon' > hold 'ctrl' and select all the sections that you will be manipulating > click the box on extrude and either drag forward or back the selected polygons > continue to complete the building using this method.

Picture 1.2

The picture below will show you the finished result (picture 1.3)

Picture 1.3

To finish the building I simply mirrored the plane and connected them together. You can reshape the building to how you desire. To create the roof it I created a box and applied a grey slate texture and placed it on top of the building. Below is a picture of the final result. I am quite pleased with how easy and quick I was able to create this building. Yes, it isn't the highest quality and I would be able to create something a lot more effective if I was to spend some time however I wanted to reduce the amount of time and reduce the poly count and this building achieves this. 

 Picture 1.3

Time Spent: 20 minutes